The economic advisor of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Professor Eugene Kandel (also the head of Israel’s Council of Economics has suggested that Israel starts to consider using bitcoins. The speech he delivered was part of his contribution to a conference that was held in Jerusalem by the Ministry of Treasury in Israel. The speech was all about labor contracts and wages.
When mentioning bitcoins, Kandel was expressing his opinion on the economic realities in Israel, and how disrupting technology is making the modern workforce change. During his speech, he also gave an estimate that around 900,000 workers in Israel were at a high threat of having their job roles replaced by technology, a very frightening prospect! He also believed that a small percentile of the 900,000 would not find themselves unemployed, but they would be faced with a job role that offered them no growth.
Professor Kandel suggested that Israel focuses on becoming leaders in niche parts of technology sectors to solve the issue. He also went on to talk about how the small nation focusing and being able to corner certain niches, would help the country to excel and boost the economy. He questioned bystanders at the conference whether or not the government were going to be able to make regulations that would be able to support innovations and new technological advancements that would be able to provide long term economic benefits.
Bitcoins were used as one of the examples and he also mentioned that the government needed to take chances with the digital currency. He then went on to discuss that if bitcoins did excel around the world then Israel would be in a very good financial position economically.
Stem Cell Research and Bitcoins
The thought that Israel could be a leader in bitcoins in the near future has been proposed to the government in the past. In February last year, attendees from the Bank of Israel were propositioned by panelists who brought forward precedence from stem cell research that had been conducted. In that scenario, it was suggested that Israel would be able to be one of the leaders in stem cell research to fill a gap that the US had left after they limited their research. In the same way, by becoming active in the promotion of bitcoins, Isreal has a strong potential for becoming a hub to export technology innovations that are related to digital currency payments.
